The first European Bank for induced pluripotent Stem Cells

Welcome to the official website of EBiSC, a large European public-private partnership project supported jointly by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) and members of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), which aims at establishing the first European Bank for induced pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC).

EBiSC is designed to address the increasing demand for quality-controlled, disease-relevant research-grade iPSC lines, data and cell services.

EBiSC will demonstrate after 3 years an operational responsible banking and distribution service of iPSC lines by building a robust, reliable supply chain from the generation of cell lines, over the specification, to internationally accepted quality criteria and their world-wide distribution to any qualified user.

EBiSC will subsequently establish for Europe a centralised, not-for-profit bank providing researchers across academia and industry with access to scalable, cost-efficient and consistent, high quality tools for new medicines development.

EBiSC is coordinated by Pfizer Ltd and managed by Roslin Cells Ltd. and includes private corporations such as pharmaceutical companies, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and non-profit organisations, as well as academic, charitable and public institutions.

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30.09.2014:
The “Hot Start” phase of the EBiSC Foundational Collection has started

with the arrival of the first iPSC lines from Newcastle University and the Universitätsklinikum Bonn. These will be joined by up to 60 additional Hot Start lines from our 8 iPSC centres.

The EBiSC Catalogue – The Foundational Collection and Beyond

During the “Hot Start” phase up to 64 iPS cell lines representing both disease backgrounds and normal controls will enter the EBiSC Foundational Collection. These iPS cell lines which are being expanded by the eight iPSC Centres have already been well characterised and are in most cases published. (Click here to access the list of available iPSC lines).

In addition to the Hot Start phase, hundreds of lines from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute’s HipSci project will join the collection as will lines generated by academic laboratories from all around the world.

The EBiSC – European Bank for induced pluripotent Stem Cells project has received support from the Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking under grant agreement n° 115582, resources of which are composed of financial contribution from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and EFPIA companies’ in kind contribution. www.imi.europa.eu